CHAPTER XV.
AN INGENIOUS INTRODUCTION.
More uneasy about the Indians, whom Captain Kidd knew to be embitteredwhen repulsed at an almost victory, and about the trappers whom herightly conjectured to have interfered to save the Canadians fromannihilation, he moved leisurely to the rendezvous with the convict inorder to examine the ground. But nothing was visible to accentuatehis fears, and, spying the fantastic block of lava stone in question,he hastened to congratulate Dick on the splendid lie by which thegold seekers were given the credit of saving the Bois Brules. As heexpected, the Englishman, not having his own cause to move slowly, wasalready at the tryst. At all events, a figure in all points resemblinghis was before the stone, clearly outlined against it, though he waspuzzled to account for a second object, human in form, but of anabnormal flesh colour, like a "raw" corpse, pendant a foot or two fromthe ground as if hung to a jutting point of the natural obelisk.
"Fool that I am!" suddenly ejaculated Captain Kidd, who had stoppedwith a chill to the heart, "It's the strange light before nightfallthat is giving me a scare! Why, it's nothing but a young bear that hehas killed and flayed!--Bear's steak for supper! Ha, ha!"
Indeed, with their peculiar long paws, nothing more resembles a man,excepting cousin monkey, than uncle bear, slim with wintering.
On a nearer approach, any doubt about Dick's identity with the formcalmly leaning on the rifle was impossible. Nevertheless, the silenceand the immobility of the bandit appalled the other, and the hangingfigure, drumming with its heels on the upright stone as the spinningand unspinning of its cord of support oscillated it, increased inghastliness and its likeness to _homo_ rather than _ursa_.
Pausing again anew, he let himself be attracted to understand thepuzzle, and, as Dick made no movement, far less a reply to his nowfrenzied appeal, he darted madly to the butte where the lava stone roselike a monument. There the explanation was ample.
Some merciless hand had slain the Englishman, beheaded him, and flaredhim, with the skin of the neck only left intact, and after suspendingthe body like an artist's _ecorche_ along the pillar, stuffed the humanhide out with snow so that not a wrinkle showed. The cold had frozenthis effigy into the semblance of a marble statue. Whilst the captaingazed horrified, some scratches on the obelisk near the suspendedcorpse caught his eyes. He read with redoubled apprehension:
"--, known as 'the Sydney Duck,' 'Sydney Dick,' and 'the Convict,' escaped from Australian prisons, murderer of Californian miners, of Don Gregorio Peralta, and of his daughter, Mrs. Filditch, tried, found guilty, and executed by Us,"
"THE MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN."
"_Hands off!_ This is the buzzard's bait, do you hear?"
Then the drawing of a rifle and crossed knives, and the fur trademarksof Jim Ridge, Cherokee Bill, and the name "S. G. Filditch," firmlygraven.
At the end of reading this weird death sentence, which was a warningtoo, Captain Kidd uttered a terrible execration, and clutching hisrifle and knife, as if he expected the wild justiceers to springout upon him from around the monolith, darted frenziedly from theunhallowed eminence.
But he had no pursuers, and reflection came to him after half an hour'smad floundering in the snow, that he would be safer among his men thansolitary. Besides, Lottery Paul had probably returned, and might, inthe chiefs absence, preach that doctrine of retreat to the gin palacesof the frontier which was, on the face of it, superior to the presentoutlook. His iron hand could alone contain the bandits if any could.
"Besides," murmured he, "what would 'Dave Steelder' say if he knew meto turn such a skulk? After all, what a riddance that rough brute is!As for me, I have had some very close calls, but fortune has carried methrough."
The grey sky was darkening, distant objects were already blending intocompact masses. Luckily, though not a proven trail finder, Kidd hadwoodcraft in plenty, and soon hit on the proper homeward direction. Onspying an indubitable mark, he uttered a sigh of gratification, andhurried to make up for lost time. He judged that within the hour hewould be in camp, when he came upon some fresh and bold prints in thesnow crust, hardening as the night brought coolness. No one could doubtthat they were made by a grizzly bear, not the black or the brown, butthe genuine "Uncle Ephraim" himself. This set the fugitive a-thinking.A braver man than he does not foresee a meeting with Old Eph. withoutpardonable misgiving.
The grizzly or the grisly--according to whether you name him after hiscoat or the horror he inspires, is, far more than the lion, the kingof beasts, for he is perfect in courage, in strength, steadiness undergunfire, and a noble good humour towards his folk. He is, perhaps, theonly animal that dances in sheer love of amusement, and his gambols ata "bears' party" are the drollest sight a hunter ever knows. It is truefew have looked on and lived to tell. The Rocky Mountains are the homeof the veritable grizzly, and the frequency of his apparition among themines of the Sierra Nevada won the title of the Grizzly Bear State forCalifornia.
Captain Kidd recovered from the recent shock that had unhinged himbefore a danger that required coolness to temper bravery. He shook hishead like a Newfoundland coming out of the water, and growled.
"This lumbering fool has smelt the camp, and has put himself exactly inmy way back. I wish he had given those Canadians a visit where thereare plenty of dead bodies."
He carefully examined his rifle, slipped in a second bullet in agreased wad, and resumed his march, but with extreme caution. Thedifficulty was not to stumble on his foe, who, with razor sharp clawssix or seven inches long, would make a man look as if he had gonethrough a "system of saws" in a mill.
He had proceeded some five hundred yards, so as to nearly get out ofthe tangle wood of deciduous trees, distorted and stunted by the coldwinds, when a prolonged cavernous grumbling, arising not far from him,sent an icy shiver all through him. He stopped short, bent forward,and took a wary look. Before attaining a clearing, there was a narrowcanyon to cross, profoundly cleft between two perpendicular sides,two yards deep and twenty paces long. About a third of the way upthis channel, leisurely sprawling on the snow, in which he was partlyembedded on account of his great weight, a grizzly was licking his forepaws and smoothing pine burrs out of his harsh coat. Suddenly, theanimal winked its little savage eyes, pricked its snub ears up, and,without glancing round or caring to listen, set to sniffing. Its subtlescenting faculty had been aroused by some unwonted and consequentlydisquieting emanation. Nevertheless, a fact delighting the captain, itwas not he to whom the bear was paying any heed.
"Good luck to the stir in the air that saves me!" he thought. "Thecreature never imagines that a man is treading on his tail. 'Tis asplendid fur coat; but I am not hunting grizzly just at present, thankyou! I don't care for any on my toast!"
Hence, he was taking a backward step and looking about him to try tomanage a circuit to avoid the encounter, when he heard what seemedan echo, _only a little more so_, of the bear's growl. It came frombehind him, and was so angrily intoned that he was most surprised tosee a second grizzly, no doubt the mate of the first, slouching alongtowards him, its head lowered in his track.
To be the shuttlecock between two ursine battledores is one of thoseexperiences of which few victims narrate the incidents.
The second antagonist was certain to arrive at him by its unerringscent, and, moreover, was the nearer as well as the larger beast.To shoot and run for his life was all the course which his frightcounselled, so he lifted his gun, levelled it steadily at the grizzly'seye, partly veiled by its shaggy fore hair, and pulled the trigger.Unfortunately, whether the piece had been tampered with, or the snowhad eaten away the barrel, the charge hung fire, and the peculiarand frightfully loud detonation betokened that the barrel had burst.Without being wounded, the captain pitched forward head foremost intothe snow, from not meeting the recoil which he had nerved himself toresist.
Both bears howled together, rattled their claws and gnashed theirteeth, and, with a loud snarling, bounded towards the hapless captain.Mecha
nically, he drew his knife, but, on scrambling to his feet,experienced a fear so inexpressibly appalling that he forgot hisdetermination to resist to the inevitable death, and leaped away in amad scamper.
Accustomed to riding, he was not a good pedestrian; his winter garmentswere unsuitable, and he was no longer blessed with youth. Besides,to get over such ragged ground, and among tough, thorny, scrubby_conifera_, was impossible for one in blind haste. He could tell bytheir breathing that the two bears were nearing him, bound for bound.He had lost his knife, and his revolver having been torn out of hisbelt by a briar too, he was absolutely at the mercy--an unknownelement--of his pursuers. He dared not turn his head; in hunters'phraseology, he felt them ruffle his hair with their breath; and, intruth, Old Ephraim and his spouse were not a dozen steps off. His ownhair stood up, spite of a cold perspiration, for he felt that he wasirremediably lost. In two or three minutes, say five at most, he wouldbecome that not unique subject of a well-worn Western epitaph--grantingthat he was left in _buriable_ tatters--Unknown man gobbled up bygrizzly.
He was stopped by the inability to make a further move; both bearsreared up, and the least towered a head and shoulders above him. Hewas, by the force of education, striving to recall a prayer, when ahuman hand unexpectedly clutched him by the collar and dashed him down,crying in a voice most energetic:
"_Lay_ down, you fool, and give a man a chance to shoot, will you not?"
As the captain again was buried in the snow, two rapid reports of agun extinguished in their reverberations the growls of the grizzlies.Then arose a couple of painful lamentations from their hoarse throats,and, as Kidd lifted his head, he beheld with stupefied eyes a mandisdainfully pursuing the bears and keeping them "on their run" withpanic by pelting them with snowballs and splinters of ice till theydisappeared over a mound and into some crevice, where the chaser deemedit good sense not to follow further.
"What is this all?" the gold grabber demanded, sitting up, still halfdazed and wholly incredulous, and speaking Spanish, as one in direstraits always uses the mother tongue.
"Talk English," responded the other, returning rapidly and recharginghis double-barrelled gun, according to hunters' rules, never to carryunloaded firearms in a dangerous country. "And don't talk to me of thecourage of the grizzly any more. Are you alive? I mean, are you notwounded?"
"I am not sure how I am," returned the chief of the gold seekers,standing with difficulty, and staring at his rescuer.
It was Ranald Dearborn, clad as a regular hunter; but his face was notburnt and weather beaten yet, like a veteran's, and he had an elegantand almost dandified air, which his recent conduct belied.
He laughed as the captain brushed himself down, and "tried" all hisjoints, doubtingly.
"Where are the bears?" inquired Kidd, anxiously.
"I drove them into a crack that probably leads to their lair. They shedmy shot and my bullet off like rain from a roof; but we may be morelucky in another attack. Shall we have a turn at them?"
"Thank you very much, but I have had all I want of such diversion. Why,when they reared, it was like looking up the side of a church! I amsure their teeth were as long as a hunting knife. Who and what are you,stranger?"
"A hunter--an Englishman wintering in Canada and hereabouts--came outto this New World to see some sport."
"Alone!" cried Kidd, in the tone of one addressing a madman. "Stop,though, I have heard--though I never believed it--that solitary huntersof your nationality do come here with the notion that buffalo aremerely wild bullocks, the puma a large edition of the domestic cat, andgrizzly himself, a rough badger puffed into balloon size by _pinyon_fruit. I say, friend," he went on, nervously glancing about, "kindlylend me your arm as far as my encampment. I am in force here, andpromise you good entertainment. Not a man of my band but will welcomethe preserver of their leader. I owe my life to you doubly; you mustnot go away till I shall have acquitted myself of the debt."
"Nonsense! It's all in the day's sport. You would do as much for me, ifit had been the other way about."
"I doubt it--I draw the line at grizzly. But you know that such aservice obliges the doer as much as the receiver. Come along."
"I tell you, I am used to camp down anywhere I feel sleepy. I have nofear of rheumatism," returned the young man, gaily.
"I beg you to accompany me to my camp, for I am quite lame, and spendat least a night there."
"Do you insist upon that?" inquired Dearborn, with a singularexpression.
"Certainly; we must drink to our better acquaintance;" dragging himfeverishly along.
"Have your own way."
"You Englishmen are all as rich as you are eccentric, but no man can betoo rich. I may be able to relieve myself of some of my obligation yet."
"Not a word of that! As for accompanying you to your camp, please toobserve that you entreated me to do so."
"I'd force you if I could."
"This is a queer world, and in this wilderness passions ruleunconstrained. Friends overnight shoot at one another at sight at noonof the morrow! If we ever fall out, mind, you must not blame me, sinceI wanted to be left alone, as I came."
"What trash! You are joking in that dry way which we Spanish wellunderstand. You have saved my life."
"It looks so, does it not? Still, I should feel more certain on thatpoint, and rate myself more of a hero if we had those bearskins--oneapiece!"
"I'll send twenty men to track them to the death, and you shall haveboth. But come on."
Leaning upon the stranger's arm in an affectionate manner, CaptainKidd pressed on as nimbly as his shattered nerves and really crippledstate permitted. Not one look behind did he give, and yet, had he beenable to see the other side of the rising ground, over which Ranaldhad driven the terrified bruins, he would have been given food forreflection.
In fact, sitting on their tails, without their heads, which they heldin their paws, the bears were laughing with supplementary inner mouthsbelonging to quite human countenances. These bore a strong resemblanceto those of Cherokee Bill and Jim Ridge. They, of few men, had thenecessary knowledge of grizzly's fife and demeanour to play the partwhich had completely deceived Captain Kidd, and would have succeededwith a more skilled hunter. Presently the two disrobed themselves,flung away the osier rods which had swelled out the skins, packed thelatter up, and winked drolly at one another.
"I say, Bill, mind you see the editor of the _Rocky MountainSquelcher_," observed the old trapper, humorously, "and insert the itemthat Mr. R. Dearborn was introduced to Captain Kidd by Mr. and Mrs. G.Bear!"